


null hypothesis

by malfaisant



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 12:59:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfaisant/pseuds/malfaisant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The status quo was comfortable, so perhaps that was why he became complacent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	null hypothesis

He never realised how much he counted on Steve remaining oblivious, and on how much he’d let himself slip as a result of that assumption. Steve was off-limits and would never acknowledge his attentions as anything more than camaraderie—and Tony had been fine with that, the status quo was comfortable, so perhaps that was why he became complacent. It was inexcusable, because it should’ve all been a simple matter of staying on guard (don’t stare so intently, don’t look at his mouth, don’t let your hand on the small of his back linger too long). The key was control, and there was contentment in the certainty that he would never get what he wanted. Order, patterns, the calculation of vastly improbable odds.

When Steve grabs his wrists, pushes him up against a wall, and kisses him, in the tower where anyone can walk in, anyone can see, Tony’s first response is absolute terror.

Steve’s lips are softer than Tony imagined them being, and his fingers cradle his jaw, pressing into the hollows of his neck. It was a miscalculation, it was supposed to be simple arithmetic but this time Tony had added two and two and somehow gotten something more—

_you weren’t supposed to love me back._

(This  _is_  a simple problem, just simple discrete variables. Tony imagines an infinite-sided die and all the outcomes make his heart thud uncomfortably against the walls of his rib cage except for one.)

_I wasn’t supposed to get what I wanted._

There’s a familiar aching shudder in his chest, like a shock of electricity, but that doesn’t make sense, he hasn’t had to charge his heart in ages. Steve’s fingers tangle in his hair, his body pressing Tony flat against the wall, flush against him from shoulder to hips. Numbers run behind Tony’s closed eyes as he kisses back, warm and trembling and he doesn’t remember having ever felt this, some intoxicating cocktail of fear and want. He kisses back, but he keeps his eyes shut, because he can’t open them yet, he’s afraid of input, unknown data—the shade of red Steve blushed, the dip of his brow as he frowned in concentration, how blue his eyes were and whether they were open as he kissed Tony.

(Tony Stark is not a statistician, but he runs the numbers and extrapolates the odds, the probabilities of projected outcomes. He counts a thousand ways to lose Steve, a thousand more to hurt him, but if there was a possibility of a happy ending for them both, in this life that they led, the numbers are too low as to be incalculable.

He has many vices, but gambling has never been one of them.)

Steve breaks off the kiss with a huff of laughter against his mouth, surprised and relieved. He punctuates his words with light presses of his lips on Tony’s face, on his cheek and jaw and the lids of his still-shut eyes, a brush of fingers on the back of his neck. “God, I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, that you felt the same way.”

_would it feel different to have your heart broken on purpose?_

Steve kisses his mouth again, and Tony wonders when he’s become so terrible at lying.


End file.
